Overcoming Sensory Dysfunction (Part II)

Seb has made much progress in overcoming his intolerance for hand dryers, yet he pleads that all the windows in the house be closed whenever the sprinklers are watering the landscaping. It seems he cannot stand for the incessant sizzling sounds of spraying plant drink. He begs us to turn them off.

Our current mitigation plan includes closing all of the downstairs windows while the sprinklers quench the thirst of parched palms. As the summer continues to heat up, open windows cool the house. To optimize the watering schedule, keep the windows open and the house cool, I am about to reprogram the sprinklers to go off at a time when Seb is fast asleep. Meanwhile, we are patient that we’ll soon have a chance to explore potential long-term solutions to help Seb increase his tolerance for treble.

So many interventions are available for toddlers who’ve been diagnosed with ASD, the search for appropriate treatments can be baffling. My wife and I struggle to find appropriate sensory integration therapy, otherwise known as Occupational Therapy (OT), for our son. We sort through services available from public and private agencies. We find the right therapist by calling and interviewing them. Sometimes we need to pay for a trial evaluation. If we think we have a match, then we scramble for funding for frequent sessions, which might include a necessity to endure a grueling 45-day process to obtain pre-approval through our health insurance. Moreover, we know not all interventions are created equal.

Seb is slowly learning to embrace the sounds of life. At the History of Music Museum in Carlsbad, for the first time ever, he picked up the drumsticks.

Shopping for therapies is not like sampling desserts at the end of the frozen foods aisle of Costco. We cannot take one home, try it out, and if we don’t like it, return to Costco the next day to sample another. True, a single session with a therapist might tell us if we’ve bitten into something nasty.

Then again, a single session will not tell us if we have struck it rich and found an effective treatment. Therapies must be explored and tried out over the course of a month or more. Sometimes, we need to put our son on a wait-list that can take more than six months before an evaluation may even be made. Other times, the benefits of a particular therapy are not revealed for as long as a year. For instance, successful parents of ASD kids tell us that hyperbaric oxygen therapy might require almost a year of sessions before a breakthrough occurs. After a lot of time, patience and many payments to the health care provider, they finally experience results.

With various types of sensory integration therapy available, a kid with sensory dysfunction might need one or more of them, depending on his needs and the results of evaluations. Some are more effective for kids on one end of the spectrum, and less effective for those on the other. Some good for small kids, others perfect for big ones. Some more effective for your kid, less effective for mine. Fortunately, a wide range of intensities for sensory integration therapy exist to correct specific deficits in sensory processing.

Sensory Integration Therapies

Here is my brief description of sensory integration therapies that either have worked for our kid or we would like to try in the future:

Fast Forword: Fast Forword is a scientifically designed series of computer-based games that aid a child to process sounds, specifically those associated with language and communication. The program is typically administered by a speech pathologist over the summer, every day for about an hour. If playing computer games on an iMac were not exciting enough, as an incentive to play the games, the administrator of the program Seb took, Wings Speech and Lanugage Center, implemented a token economy. Seb saved his tokens and was rewarded with a small prize at the end of each week.

In one game, a child learns to listen and recognize all of the sounds of a single word. This game has a tic-tac-toe grid of the same drab, blobby shape, for a total of nine blobs. Obviously, the grid is designed to facilitate the player to focus on sounds, rather than on graphic presentations. The game begins by sounding a control word, a word that must be recognized to score points. Our son listens with headphones to the stretched control word. The software stretches and thereby lengthens the word’s sounds. Then each of the nine shapes sounds either the control word or a similarly sounding word. When Seb recognizes the word, he clicks the mouse to acknowledge and scores points. The points measure his progress and help him attain rewards.

Seb and Ashley make monkey bars out of the playground equipment. The goal of sensory integration therapy is to help Seb turn the world into his own personal jungle.

Big Fun Gymnastics: Big Fun Gymnastics is a provider of high-intensity sensory integration therapy. This therapy is administered in professional Olympic quality gymnasiums around the Los Angeles area and Orange County. The therapy incorporates competition-scale gymnastics equipment into exercises. The therapist utilizes balance beams, trampolines, parallel bars and gigantic foam shapes to build obstacle courses intended to challenge a kid with ASD. By training in the gym, our son developed motor planning skills by working through relatively complicated courses. Seb also demonstrated his rotational tolerance by sitting strapped into a swing and spinning like a top for several minutes. Once the therapist stopped the swing from spinning, Seb hopped down and proceeded to run in a straight line across the mat. This intensive sensory integration therapy helped Seb to develop a working memory, which is required to successfully approach and carry out novel, complex and multi-step procedures and routines.

Karate for All: Seb was recommended for this by his pediatric neurologist. This is a blend of martial art and occupational therapy that combines for an intensive sensory integration therapy. The chops, kicks, rolls, hops and blood-curdling Kiai of this martial art would certainly provide Seb with the kind of stimulation he naturally seeks. The discipline of this sport might help him with his focus. A group class might satisfy a need for our son to participate in community based activities, but individual classes are also available. Karate for All has two locations, one in Tustin and the other in Mission Viejo. If we were residing in any city in Orange County, we would be taking our son to Karate For All to give it a good try.

A Sensory Diet: A promise often made by school occupational therapists and teachers is that an appropriate sensory diet will be implemented in school to help kids with sensory processing dysfunction. A symptom of sensory dysfunction is a short attention span–really short, like, at times, a couple of seconds. Affected kids are easily distracted in a typical classroom. A sensory diet enables the kid to function in a learning environment without being distracted by the multitude of sights and sounds. It helps with reading, listening and otherwise sitting still and following directions in the classroom.

A typical sensory diet includes simple fidget toys that are handed to kids whenever they appear to be ready to bounce around the room. An example of a fidget toy is a balloon filled with sand. Squeezing it is supposed to calm the kid down. As a dad, I do not see a lot of value in fidget toys. While our son was in preschool, we requested that the occupational therapist place a small trampoline in the classroom. Whenever the teacher noticed Seb was walking on his tip-toes, she would encourage him to jump for a few moments and self-medicate with the pressure he was seeking on his lower extremities.

Seb and his pal, Shane, share jokes at the farm fest. Seb was known among his peers for coloring well outside the lines.

Our son had been picking his nose at school and experiencing several bouts of self-induced nose bleeds. These incidents were documented in a communications notebook that we keep for Seb, in which his teacher and all his therapists write highlights of the day. Aside from nosebleeds, other highlights have included fist fights, biting incidents, and benign trampoline exercises. After several problems with our son’s sensory integration in his Kindergarten class, an occupational therapist at one of Seb’s schools implemented what is known as a Drive Thru Menu program.

The Drive Thru Menu program is supposed to teach kids to become aware of the variance of their activity levels in class and regulate their behavior at school. As part of the program, kids are made aware of their bodies. Activity levels and moods are identified in stages as engine levels. If a kid is jumpy, his engine level is high. If a kid is in a daze, his engine level is low. Seb and his classmates were encouraged to review the Drive Thru Menu throughout the day and find ways to recognize and regulate their engine levels. It seems that the Drive Thru Menu program is tailored to the needs of the occupational therapist to efficiently manage a multitude of young children in the classroom without spending more than a few minutes in it.

Surfer’s Healing is probably not for everyone, but it’s one I’d like my son to try. The Surfer’s Healing is a therapy which combines a long board, swell waves and kids with sensory overload. The Surfer’s Healing includes an introduction to the calming power of the ocean, one-on-one surfing lessons, and some excitement for kids with sensory dysfunction. Like most kids, Seb loves the sand. He loves the ocean, and he loves to swim. Since we live within minutes of a few of the world’s renowned beaches: Silver Strand of Coronado, Moonlight Beach of Encinitas, and La Jolla Shores, we are destined to step onto a surfboard and embrace the waves. The Surfer’s Healing schedules multiple destinations throughout the year. Dude, camps fill up quick, so it’s best to sign up as soon as they are announced.

Wheel Hypnosis, the Terror of Little Einsteins (Part I)

One morning, our son, Seb, and I were watching a cartoon together, Disney’s Little Einsteins. The Little Einsteins were traveling through a city of enormous buildings painted with a dazzling array of contrasting colors. Both Seb and I stared at the complicated cacophony of color. The images posed a small-scale brilliance similar to Hundertwasser paintings. We were captivated by the magenta, peach, lime, and scarlet display of architecture.

The Little Einsteins traveled through a city scape that reminded me of Hundertwasser’s 151 Bleeding Houses.

Suddenly, my boy experienced an involuntarily reaction. His body contorted itself, as if a nerve had been pinched. His upper lip went right, his lower lip left. With his face in a grimace, his arms, elbows and wrists twisted into the shape of a pair of pterodactyl wings. He flapped momentarily. I was beside myself as he blurted out, “Turn it off! Turn it off!” Although I quickly flicked off the cartoon, Seb continued to hobble around the room in an awkward manner, unable to right his disfigurement.

Most of us tolerate unusual arrangements and patterns of color, but Seb does not. He is challenged by sensory dysfunction. Sensory dysfunction is an apparent problem, or a host of apparent problems, with the brain’s processing of neurological information acquired via the senses. In other words, it’s an obvious dysfunction exhibited by inappropriate reactions to sensual stimulation. Also known as a Sensory Processing Disorder, it’s an abnormal experience of everyday sights, touches, sounds, scents, and flavors. It can be debilitating to a child’s balance and capacity to plan and carry out movements in response to everyday life. Seb’s innate reaction to seeing the cartoon is a symptom of his brain’s sensory dysfunction.

A couple of tests, or sensory processing measures, may be applied to a kid to qualify his ability to coordinate his body with sensory input. These sensory processing measures are administered by a registered occupational therapist either at school or in a clinical setting. The kid’s ability is qualified by his responses to typical sensual stimulation. Does he like to flip light switches on and off repeatedly? Does he jump a lot? Does he seem to enjoy sensations that should be painful? The test results might show that a kid can process one sense well enough, and another not at all. To put it simply, the slower, more lacking and otherwise more inappropriate a child’s response to sensual input, the higher the degree of sensory dysfunction he experiences.

Sensory integration therapy may be an effective treatment for sensory dysfunction in toddlers with a comorbid diagnosis of the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). But what is sensory integration therapy and how can it help? Medical experts disagree on what sensory dysfunction is, its causes, and its mitigation requirements, so sensory integration therapy is not always prescribed. As a parent of a kid diagnosed with ASD and sensory dysfunction, I can say that the dysfunction is real.

Why I Watch the Wheel

Children diagnosed with ASD seem to be fixated on the acquisition of certain kinds of sensual data. On one hand, many kids with ASD are fascinated with spinning objects and focus their eyes on the blades of spinning fans, the spokes of spinning wheels, the saw teeth of spinning books, and the gangling edges of spinning television remote controls. I admit, I do not know why kids with ASD are fascinated with spinning things, but I suspect they seek the calming effect of a sort of hypnosis. Our kid will visually simulate the sensation of spinning, as he looks out the corners of his eyes while rotating his head about the neck. At times, he seems to find comfort in spinning himself in circles.

While he has learned that some visual stimulation is pleasing, he is also bothered by other kinds of visual stimulation, like the bright, flashing lights and coordinated sounds of prime-time television. As Seb regressed into autism at a young age, he was disinterested in typical toddler activities, like watching cartoons and other children’s shows. Whenever the television was on, he would look elsewhere or line up and park his toy cars. But, oddly enough, as he defied his autism every night after taking a bath. He would demand that we sit down for an episode of Wheel of Fortune. No doubt Seb was calmed by watching the wheel spin, whether the pointer poked at $350 or to Jackpot. Deep down, of course, I believe Seb just wanted to spend a couple of extra moments with Dad before bedtime.

The Terror of Noise

I am sure you have heard that kids diagnosed with ASD are special. Many of them have a lesser degree of tolerance for unusual noise. Perhaps, they have no tolerance at all and that, for instance, the noise made by hand dryers simply scares the bejesus out of them. While Seb seemed drawn to spinning things, he was violently opposed to harsh sounding things. The noise of an automatic hand dryer absolutely frightened Seb.

But, really, what is the big deal about the sound of a hand dryer frightening someone? I mean, let’s be honest, who enjoys hearing the sound of one of those enamel-coated, wall-mounted hot air blowers? No one. Who hates it? Everyone. Now, who tolerates the sound? Anyone who wants to walk out of a public bathroom without flapping their hands dry. Most people have tolerated this noise long enough for industrial engineers to, at last, once and for all, advance automatic hand drying technology to eliminate the over-the-top air force of a veritable reverse vacuum cleaner.

Seb was so frightened of hand dryers that he would forego Happy Meals to avoid hearing one. Within sight of the Golden Arches, he would run in the opposite direction. Once inside, unfazed, he would scream a bloody war cry out to everyone, all of the McDonald’s employees and customers, against hand dryers. His protests attracted quite a lot of attention. De-sensitizing Seb to the noise of a hand dryer required patience and a willingness to deflect the daggers of scorn being thrown at me by my neighbors. I once carried him from the door of the playground, across the entire restaurant, to the exit door, as he screamed in terror. His sole fear was that he’d have to walk past a restroom. In our wake, a crowd of concerned mothers and annoyed fathers.

Telltale Signs

Symptoms of sensory dysfunction are not always obvious. Our son simply had to be reminded and prompted multiple times to complete simple tasks like dressing or undressing. His attention span seemed to be very short. Telltale signs emerged, making it clear that Seb experienced significant sensory dysfunction. Some of Seb’s behaviors we later recognized as symptoms include walking everywhere on tippy-toes, a penchant for spinning himself in circles, and his habit of repeating again in whispers the things he says out loud. Of course, treatments exist to lengthen short attention spans, and we would have sooner considered feeding our boy drugs than taking him to a sensory integration therapist, if it had not been prescribed by our son’s pediatric neurologist.

What Now?

Someday I would like to be able to say, “Even after all this therapy and effort to help him, maybe Seb was normal. Maybe he did need a little more time to develop than most kids.” Until then, these sensory challenges are difficult to ignore. Once we were able to recognize these telltale signs as symptoms of sensory dysfunction, we needed to act–and fast. Soon I will share some of our mitigation strategies regarding how we have helped Seb develop his processing ability and foster an acceptance of his senses.

Someday He’ll Be a Hero

It takes a courageous soul and a true downhill specialist to attempt a double diamond run in a blizzard. And only the most expert of sailors would take out a small craft under the warning flag and sail wing-on-wing. As for climbing up to the Everest base camp in a pair of flip-flops: leave that to anyone born in an afternoon’s shadow of Annapurna. And, by the way, parents of autistic kids are of a different breed of parent, though not quite gifted as you are welcome to think.

No more or less skilled than those of typical children, indeed, parents of autistic kids are like school crossing guards assigned to monitor the security of Fort Knox. We are the veritable employees of McDonald’s placed in charge of establishing a nutritional system and meal plan for the United States of America’s Olympic Rowing Team. Yes, we are like high school graduates sitting for a bar exam. Let me be clear, although my autistic child has special needs that I ought to address, my parental super powers are not superior to those of any parent of a typical kid.

Obviously, I wish I had super powers. Autistic kids are not easy kids to raise. Although an ASD kid may be gifted with early reading skills as he enters Kindergarten, he might also retain the emotional maturity of a two-year-old through the end of first grade, tearing, screaming and crying his way through the days. And he may alienate his peers with disturbing or repetitive behaviors, like, and for no apparent reason, slamming his own head into the wall over and over again. While our son’s classmates engage each other in pretend play and sports activities on the playground, he can be frequently found to be spinning himself in circles. The thing about Seb is that he spins around and around and around, but he never gets dizzy. He just keeps spinning, and I wonder, could this be a talent?

To raise a child with autism certainly requires a level of intervention that most parents simply do not anticipate that they can easily muster. It’s doable, but with ASD, there is no wait-and-see. We do not endure tantrums, continue to change diapers and foster our child’s obsession with spinning things beyond age 5 and otherwise do nothing. If we do not act while our kids are young, they will simply fall further behind and then perhaps require even more special attention. Actually, there is so much more we can do right here, right now.

If I could have one super power, I would want to be able to be everywhere at once. So that no matter where I had to be, I could also be on the playground with my son encouraging him to stop spinning and make some friends. Such persistent qualities as these, the delay in socio-emotional maturity and the odd repetitive behaviors, keep ASD kids from advancing. If they hit them at all, they reach their organic development milestones late. For now, I am simply trying my best to help my kid improve, and it seems that I will have to try just a little bit harder.

What’s Boring? Oh, School

“I want to do exciting things, for ever and ever and ever,” Seb said one summer’s eve, as we were preparing to complete his nightly check list. This proclamation followed, “But I don’t want to do boring things” like the items on his check list, which include taking a bath, brushing teeth, story time, and sleep. “Taking a bath is boring,” Seb said.

“Then either you take a boring bath, where you sit in a tub of lukewarm water up to your elbows, or you can take an exciting bath,” I said, as I turned on the shower head and hot water rained down into the empty tub. “An exciting bath is like a rainstorm, where you are taking a bath in the midst of a jungle, a rain forest. Seb, step into your own, personal rainstorm!”

Home is our platform for concocting and carrying out exciting activities. Once we organized the house, we were able to focus on weeding out the boring things from our everyday lives.

Now that Seb is differentiating between boring activities and exciting ones, to help us make the best use of available time, Seb and I are compiling lists of exciting things and boring things. We limit boring things to a simple necessity, and we create a schedule rock chalk full of exciting things.

A few boring things:

• Watching grown-up channels on TV,
• Brushing teeth,
• School,
• Playing inside,
• Time outs,
• Sleep.

Several exciting things:

• Going to the YMCA Kidzone,
• Playing Outside,
• Watching Cartoons on PBSKids.Org,
• Free Play at My Gym,
• Belmont Park, and
• Rainstorm Bath.

Across the street from our house, a park, a frequent destination of our many excursions.

The most exciting thing for us is exploring the canyon wilderness, home to bird, rabbit, lizard, snake and coyote. We have seen them all. Because our house is situated on the canyon ridge, trekking through it has proven to be very accessible. To reach the canyon, we walk out our front door, down the steps, across the street and around the park to the canyon trailhead. The way into the canyon can be a very invigorating gallop down a steep trail to a ravine, where a fork in the road leads us to our first important decision: shall we venture through the tunnel of trees or into the fur ball forest?

Seb directs my attention into the canyon, as we preview today’s pathway. Today’s trip logged a duration of about an hour and a half.

The canyon is like a beginner’s training course for future large scale hikes. We can complete a trek in less than 30 minutes in an evening, or we can hike for a couple of hours on a weekend. In the canyon, we walk along rolling foot paths or jog up short, steep foot hills. One trail leads across a stream and demands its followers to bound over rocks and across precarious concrete balance beams. Another path dead ends in a scramble of bramble thorns and thistle. And another bounds over a puddle environment for scattering pollywogs. Along the way are places to stop and catch our breaths while snacking on food items, like apples and granola bars.

Seb stands at the canyon trailhead at the edge of the park. Though we know many ways into the canyon, we established this as our favored starting point.

On one afternoon hike, Seb told me to wait down at the bottom of the ravine, that he was going to climb up one of the hills by himself. I stood down there and watched, as Seb climbed up the hill. He made it up the hill pretty well, but near the top, I noticed he was struggling. He would climb straight up the hill a short way and then slide down again. He did this several times and started yelling to me for help. His yells transformed into cries. He cried for five minutes before I climbed up to reach him and then directed him to the side of the hill for an easier way up, and he reached the top on his own. Once he made the adjustment, it was an easy trial. Since that day, during every trip through the canyon, Seb commands a moment for a similar hill-climbing exercise.

While we are shuffling down steep dirt trails and across rocky paths, I am envisioning a time when we will be together on the other side of the world. In Nepal, home of the highest peaks on earth. There we will hike through and over the Himalayas with our friends from Dang and Deukari Valleys and into the welcoming gardens surrounding the Village of Shakuma. Traveling together through Nepal would be the pinnacle of our achievement, but we know that to get into real shape, we will need to tackle depths more than a hundred times those of our neighborhood canyon. I mean, seriously, where we will go, girls Seb’s age run down and up ten canyons every morning just to fetch a couple buckets of water.

Seb walks up ahead adjacent to the Home Depot Canyon. This canyon was named for Home Depot, which was built on an adjacent ridge.

New Home, New Horizon

Friends, we are a tad beyond the halfway point through the end of the final year of the most popular of Mayan calendars. If the world as we know it would end later this year, as is widely anticipated by even quite a few who have only cursorily studied the prophesied impacts of said calendar, Elia and I would feel satisfied that we had reached one of our lifetime goals: to make our home in San Diego.

Cousins Seb, Jonathan and Hannah climb the meandering sidewalk together on a warm afternoon in Rancho Del Rey. This sidewalk straddles two shallow canyons, a wilderness preserve in Chula Vista known as Rice Canyon.

San Diego, sunny every day and a steady 21 degrees Celsius from January through December; San Diego, where countless activities abound for families with children of all ages; San Diego, one of the friendliest cities for commuters in Southern California, where, instead of the middle finger, drivers give each other the thumb–up; San Diego, which requires that more than 80% of its water to be imported from the Colorado River and Northern California via purchase agreement between San Diego County Water Authority and the Metropolitan Water District; San Diego, in the end, maybe not such a bad place to be, where in even the most blighted of neighborhoods, a stranger is friendly enough to host a spontaneous stoop talk.

Seb relishes a moment in the Skyfari Aerial Tram at the San Diego Zoo. Aunt Sally, a dedicated volunteer at the Safari Park, shared a few zoo passes she had earned from her work and invited us for a day of animal gazing.

We are settled in Rancho Del Rey, a sprawling borough planted across a ridge separating two canyons in the North of Chula Vista. Highlighted on the map just east of I-805, the neighborhood of Rancho Del Rey is one of the most surprisingly beautifully landscaped suburbs that we have ever seen. Prior to the development of this master planned community, which includes tracts of housing, green ways, churches, schools, upmarket strip malls and Olympic training facilities, this land was a coyote wilderness and a thriving coastal desert ecosystem. Chula Vista’s namesake is a term of endearment that translates literally into English as a pretty view–though, as the bitter fox shrugged off the grapes that might as well be sour, this place is commonly derided as Chula-Juana or Cholo Vista. In fact, it is as if a clearing crew made way for suburban neighborhoods by wielding power machetes and hacking cactus plots to clear space just large enough for a house, street and sidewalk. Much of the natural habitat has been preserved, as green brush, stalks of fur balls, scraggly weeds, and cactus flowers light up under the year-round sunshine.

Seb and Millie catch a glimpse of the evening sun as it sets. While picnicking at a nearby park, we caught the moon nibbling at the sun during a partial solar eclipse on May 20, 2012.

As a result of the compelling beauty of its nicely planned neighborhoods, a frenzied demand exists for housing here. After tendering my resignation at the water utility in Los Angeles, Elia and I spent two weekends poring over Craigslist advertisements and MSL blurbs and driving all over San Diego, from Scripps Ranch to Carmel Mountain to Otay Mesa. Before we signed our lease agreement, we visited over twenty prospective houses, each of which was promptly rented within a few days of its initial listing. Frankly, we toured more than a few potential duds on what were otherwise great streets nearby elementary schools, which boasted of high test scores. Once we happened upon this place, we hurried to submit a rental application, expedited its approval, packed our belongings and arranged to move in only a few days time, faster than the landlord could clean up all evidence of prior inhabitants.

Grandpa and The Little Baby relax after the day’s adventure, which included furniture restoration and assembly and grilling. Grandpa and Grandma visited for couple of weeks and helped us settle in.

Since arriving in April, with our family, friends, and neighbors, Seb and I have been wandering and exploring the meandering sidewalks of Rancho Del Rey. Elia has landed a part-time job teaching music to young children all over South Bay. Elia and I feel fortunate that the house we are renting is cozy and located across the street from a park and down the street from a decent school. We are nearly, completely unpacked. Our furniture has been located in a practically permanent configuration. Some boxes just need to be tucked away into one of the many built-in hidey-holes of this house. What’s more, once we have finished, we will invite everyone to Rancho Del Rey for a home-warming celebration!

Moving In

Every night, I kneel down beside Seb’s bed and ask him what he’s going to dream about. As he ponders the question in silence, I make suggestions: “You could dream about playing an unlimited number of games at Chuck-E-Cheese. Or, how about walking through the rain forest with your best friend, Shane. Or, Seb, you could dream about stepping onto the summit of the world’s tallest mountain and afterward you could take a victory ride through the valleys on top of a bus.”

I try, but no matter my suggestion, Seb inevitably replies, “I’m going to dream about moving to Mexico!”

Well, Seb, your dream will soon come true–well, almost. Since Elia and I were married more than seven years ago, we have been talking about the potential of a move to San Diego. We certainly like the idea of living in San Diego. San Diego, where the weather is beautiful all of the time. San Diego, the paradise of Southern California. San Diego, the place we long to be. San Diego, last stop on the road to Playas de Tijuana, the home of Seb’s family. And, of course, after all that, San Diego, where the cost of living is quite high. I think we would be there now if it were not for that infamous, persistent, economic slow-down, the Latest-and-Greatest Depression.

With savings to last maybe a month without a job, our destiny was to remain in Corona, while my position as a water utility engineer was stable. Unlike many companies, this utility had zero layoffs during the past five years, and, now that I think about it, actually has never had a layoff, ever, in more than 75 years. Eventually, after working for a while and keeping my eyes peeled, I might secure lasting employment in San Diego. One can always hope.

Elia, while demanding a move, would never let me forget the one I let get away. It happened in 2008 that I had an interview at a water utility in Otay that led to a job offer, yet the timing of the opportunity was not quite right. Okay, I was only two quarters from finishing a Master of Science degree in Engineering Management at Cal Poly. Despite declining this offer, resting assured that I would be more marketable with a higher degree, the four years that followed consisted of constant job hunting. With my burgeoning resume developed at a water company serving both the San Gabriel and Cucamonga Valleys, I subsequently submitted approximately two job applications per year that merited a total of two interviews in four years, neither of which resulted in an offer, since the one that got away. Two per year may not seem like a constant job hunt, but with the bottom falling out of the land development industry, I was competing with hundreds of civil engineers of all degree of experience for a handful of advertised jobs.

Interestingly enough, if I had not stayed in night school, I would not have this opportunity that is now leading us to move. A simple school project has eventually turned into a full-time job. Over the past three years, after completing a cost model, assignments became more and more numerous and interesting, the company moved from Santa Monica to San Diego, and there we go. The movers are scheduled to arrive on Wednesday, and we are nearly packed. After a week’s grace period, I will begin work on project siting and management of a growing energy research and development firm based in San Diego. Naturally, what is most important is that Elia, Seb and Millie will be within a fifteen-minute’s drive of the beach and of countless family members.

A Baby Welcome

Little blue bird, little red bird, perched within candy crusted cages set on counters, hanging from the ceiling. A hundred white roses covering each of several round tables. Pink ribbons draped to the glass from the crystal centerpiece, a chandelier hanging from the top of the salon. White chocolate cake pops, sprinkled with sugar spheres, drizzled with pink chocolate ribbons. Breakfast fruit, a beef brisket scramble stuffed into handmade corn tortillas. Cupcakes, countless like sweet confetti. A beautiful celebration of a newborn life, a Baby Welcome.

Tia Ana arranged for handmade cupcakes and cake pops to delight guests to the Baby Welcome for Amelia Sophie.

Mothers, sisters, grandmothers, grand aunts and good friends bring themselves into the room to catch up with us and each other (Saturday, March 10, 2012). They chat about framed photograph of the baby, bathing in a bucket of love with a monarch butterfly flourish. They listen to a speech from the baby’s mom, tearful and celebratory. The whole room on edge. Elia sings a solo with a perfect pitch. A humble prayer is shared by the baby’s father. Millie coos into the microphone. Seb repeats “Cutest, Cutest, Cutest”, grinning into the PA system. This is how we welcome a baby to this world.

With a healthy portion of Elia's family attending the Baby Welcome, Amelia Sophie received a lifetime supply of diapers and a dress for each day of the month.

Gifts, a lifetime supply of diapers, a little dress for each day of the month, and the blessings from many of our friends and family. For attending the Baby Welcome in a rented salon in Playas de Tijuana. Thank you, to our family for making this happen.

Instead of a Baby Shower, Elia requested that, if anything, a Baby Welcome would be arranged for her family to see and get to know the newborn up close and in person. Tio Marcelo took excellent photographs of the event. The photos shared on this blog are from my iPhone.

Conversations of the Afterlife

There is so much news to share about my family, experiences and work, that it may be difficult to begin, like when I am gripping the phone to my ear, waiting to speak to an old friend I have not spoken to in months, or years even. What am I supposed to tell him, when he asks what’s new? What is the priority topic?

For Spring Break, my family and I visited Grandma and Grandpa in Florida. My mom is the resident park ranger at Cayo Costa State Park, an island located just off the Florida Gulf Coast, where we stopped one day.

Well, I just got home from the store and need to unload a few grocery items. I am about to head with Elia and the kids to attend a family doctor check-up. After the doctor, I need to replace a few burnt out light bulbs and then tighten a few loose screws on the mini-crib. So, how about them Royals? Oh, hey, I hear that the eclectic band with the distinct musical style is touring again this summer. I haven’t been to a rock concert in ages.

Grandpa recently replaced his sailboat with a fishing boat. While he says it was done to save him time spent on boat maintenance, I think it was done to further his enjoyment of the ocean breeze as he races from island to coast.

Of course, plenty of exciting moments can be shared with everyone at the right time. I just decided that I would wait to speak with certain people until we both have a few days to go backward and forward in time, until we are all free to talk without reproach, until we have a chance to thoroughly explain exactly how we made it to this point. In other words, it might be a few decades. I mean, we could simply wait until retirement, while on vacation on a houseboat in the middle a clear lake somewhere in Nevada. Or, we could wait until the afterlife. Then we will have plenty of time to catch up.

Cayo Costa is an island with numerous meandering trails slashing through the tropical wilderness.

There are people I would not mind catching up with, but I would be happy to wait until after retirement. I have actually been thinking of several conversations I would like to have with some people who had a sort of influence on my life, but I can wait a lot longer. I refer to these future chats as conversations to take place in the afterlife. Because, you know, it would really be too much of a challenge to schedule a time to speak with them before then, whenever we would both have a moment to spare, be at the right place at the right time. For all I know, they are already waiting for me in the afterlife.

Teen Idol of Dubious Qualification

I am actually looking forward to talking to some people I never got to talk to in life, like Mr. Glen Danzig. I went to a concert of his one night during my late teenage years. I would like to run into him in the afterlife, perhaps over a cup of coffee. I will ask him about the time, during his performance of Twist of Cain, when he looked out into the mob and made eye contact with an enraged teenager, shrieking, scowling and smoking himself hoarse. I will ask him if he thanked God for reaching yet another soul and connecting with the passion of defiance, anarchy and insanity? You never know. I also wonder if maybe he will seek me out for feedback on what I thought of the performance. We will have plenty of time to discuss it.

Middle School Bully

You know, actually, I have, relatively speaking, a lot of patience. I can wait until the afterlife before talking, for example, to my grade school bully, should we both occupy the same territory within the afterlife. When I have a chance, as in whenever I have an infinite number of moments to spare, I will seek him out, remind him that he gave me quite a difficult time in middle school. In the afterlife, I imagine we will all have a perfect memory, whether we like it or not, as we will likely be held accountable for each decision we ever made. My grade school bully will remember that morning when he and 10 of his cohorts surrounded me in an empty hallway before school, smelling of cigarettes and lacking in bathing experience. And then I will add that if it would have just been him alone, I still would have told him that I did not want to fight him. But if my grade school bully had insisted in a fight, I certainly would have crushed him, as he was several inches shorter and significantly weaker than I. I am sure he would have to agree. By the way, his scrawny come-along’s attempt to trip me as I walked away was pitiful. Where is this pitiful pal now, anyway?  I suppose it could have been a lot worse (Bullied Kid Guns Down Classmates).

And then I would ask him what was going through his mind when he and his fellow toughie agreed to challenge my friend and me to a game of tackle football, a game that he never played, a game my friend and I had been playing since we were out of diapers. I wonder, especially after both of them were body-slammed into the dirt again and again. We will both have a good laugh then, and that will be about it. Well, I will probably admit that I might have appeared to deserve being picked on to a certain extent, and I might say that what I put up with helped me later in life to be react more quickly, decisively, forcefully, and with justice.

Driver Who Cut Me Off

Some of these conversations will be very interesting, though short. There are countless apologies I will have to make to people I cut off while rushing on the freeway to what will have ended up being an overwhelmingly insignificant destination. I misunderstood that in the apparent absence of courtesy on the Southern Californian interstate, I was not actually licensed to be a jerk. It was my fault, and I now realize that my actions, even if they had been more respectful of the space of my fellow drivers, would not have had even the slightest ripple effect that would have made much of a difference, as we are all here enjoying the afterlife now.

By the way, here is an interesting story about one driver who was rescued by another driver who probably cut her off (Woman Rescues Driver She Cut Off).

The Road Less Traveled

Probably many of the infinity of conversations will take place with my family and friends, playing what-if games and exploring scenarios to their various possible outcomes. For instance, remember that rainy evening when we were 9 years old? What if we had taken that idea of creating a ding-dong ditch video game by typing a program on my Atari 400, and, right then and there, made it a reality… instead of giving up after 10 minutes of brainstorming and 2 minutes of thumbing through the programming manual. We might have invented a novel, entertaining game that we could have refined, marketed to our friends, and eventually sold to hundreds, maybe thousands of kids, across multiple platforms, namely Atari, ColecoVision, and Nintendo. And then, later, we could have rolled out an adventure series, DingDongDitchQuest for the PC. We would then, in the afterlife, be discussing our early retirement as young gaming corporation tycoons.

Or, we could have been truck drivers, really, owned trucking companies and commanded fleets of big rigs, speaking to each other in CB code. You got your ears on? Good. Let’s talk for awhile about how we would have been the most bad ass of truck drivers.

Seb is at the age now where he is considering several possible career paths: professional candy taster, pancake chef, trained model builder, and, now, professional quad racer. I am sure Uncle Kyle will also have some suggestions on which field to consider.

Playing with Words

A couple of years ago, Seb, our 5-year-old, was diagnosed with the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Elia and I were deeply affected by this news, yet we were not quite caught off guard. Although he had been meeting with many of the expected milestones of his infancy, he had gradually regressed, and almost all of those milestones were seemingly forgotten or, perhaps, abandoned. Before he lost his speaking skill, his final words were mama and papa. We had been noticing other signs a few months prior: intense focus on inanimate objects, lack of speech, and extreme separation anxiety during preschool, to name a few. The flapping of his hands at the wrist was his typical emotional response to a wide range situations.

Throughout the past two years, Seb has endured a bevy of therapists, more than I think any child should ever have to meet. He was assessed by several doctors and professionals who set to work on lifting him out of his early childhood depression. Funded in part by insurance, in part by California Department of Disabilities, in part by the California Department of Education, and the rest out of pocket, he has undergone Floortime, Applied Behavioral Analysis, Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy. Fortunately, he is a quick study and has benefited tremendously.

Seb recovers after a trek around the La Jolla UTC ice skating rink.

In just a few months, Seb went from speaking no words to reading and spelling, and at the time he was barely three years old. Over the past two years, he has made dramatic improvements in so many aspects of his life that, unless you were acutely aware of his history and the telltale manifestations of ASD, you might think Seb is a typical kid–a bit quirky, but, for the most part, typical. Look at him: you have to admit, he is a good looking kid. I mean, you might prefer his father’s green eyes to the dark brown color he shares with his mom, but he looks fine. And with a couple more years of regular, intensive therapy, he will be fine and, hopefully, low-maintenance.

We are the Champions

Elia and I are responsible and in charge of his progression. We let the therapists do their jobs and work their magic, but before we go home, we listen to them tell us how we can reinforce the skills he is picking up. We read through social stories to help him overcome his ritual anxiety. We walk him through morning and nightly check-lists to enable self-care, in which he is taking pride. His ability to speak and communicate has developed so elaborately that we enjoy helping him and seeing him improve. While Seb has worked hard, we have also tried very hard to encourage him to continue with his therapy. We make the work fun by playing games. Because Seb is astutely aware of any abnormality in his environment, we try to exploit this talent as often as we can, to foster creativity and challenge imagination. The games help draw out his focus on his own inner world into a friendly conversation.

Here are a few examples of the games we play:

• One of the first games we learned to play was to leave out a keyword in a sentence or song. For instance, when taking a bath, I used to tell him to get out of the bathtub by singing Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up. I sang it every night, and eventually Seb learned the lyrics and could sing it with me. But instead of singing it together, I would sing all of one line and leave out the final word: “Get up, stand up, stand up for your … “, and Seb would fill in the blank: “Right”. “Get up, stand up, and you don’t give up the … “, and Seb would sing: “Fight”, and we’d follow it up with the mock chord strike.

• Our favorite word game involves speaking common phrases or having typical conversations with him. In one iteration of the word game, we replace keywords with quasi-homonyms. For example, sometimes when prompting him to begin a task, chore or routine, we might say, “Ready, set, go!” But in our word game you can hear the similar cadence as we replace the word set with the word Seb: “Ready, Seb, go!” When Seb hears this and sees our feigned urgency, he laughs and asserts a correction, “No, not ready, Seb, go. Ready, set, go!”

• Another iteration of our word game involves replacing a normal direct object with another funny one. As in, when we are eating chicken nuggets, we might say, “Okay, Seb, are you ready to eat chicken plates?” Of course, no, he is not going to eat the chicken plates. “How about the chicken pancakes?” No, not the chicken pancakes. “Then how about the chicken fish sticks?” No, not the chicken fish sticks. Seb’s ready to eat the chicken nuggets.

• And in yet another musical iteration of our word game, we might change a key word in a familiar song, like We Are the Champions. Except, in our song, we change the We to Seb, as in: “Seb is the champion, my friends. He’ll keep on fighting ’til the end. Seb is the champion. Seb is the champion. No time for losers ’cause Seb is the champion of the world.”

We enjoy playing together and laughing about silly things, as we play and mess around with common phrases and songs. These simple games help Seb, like any kid, listen to every word we are saying, utilize his ability to recognize the abnormality, and enjoy the interaction.

Millie sees her Big Bro-tector and smiles with adoration.

Update from the Baby Front

Baby Amelia Sophie, or Millie, as I am liking to call her, is growing bigger and bigger–gracefully, every day. She is eating, smiling and cooing. Her hair, a lightish, blondish color, is growing out now in furry, fuzzy tufts. One of her favorite activities is to lay in her crib gazing at the lion-star-swirl-pony mobile that her Grandpa got her. Millie loves to be held and, in fact, according to Elia, demands it 24-7. Although we are struggling to enjoy a complete night’s rest, all is well on the baby front.

Here, Let’s Press Some Buttons

Parents, if we are lucky, get to answer a lot of questions from our kids. Sometimes, a question is as simple as a request for a refill of the water glass. Sometimes they are annoyances, like when I provide what I think is a definitive answer to a simple question, and then my son proceeds to operate in an infinite loop and asking “Why?” to each of my subsequent answers. Until I pull the plug with “Because.”

“Because. I’m your dad.”

In talking with my dad and asking him questions, I have learned a few things, and, of course, I wish to truly help educate my boy the same. Take the other evening, when Seb and I went on a short drive together down the street. After dropping off the rent at the landlord’s house, we returned home. I pressed the garage door opener and steered the car into the garage. “Hey, Dad, why are kids not supposed to press the buttons?” Seb asked, referring to those that operate the mapping and navigation system in our small SUV.

On the surface, this seems like one of those simple questions that has a simple answer followed by a hearty, self-righteous chuckle, like, “Well, Seb, if you press the wrong button, we might end up driving into the wrong garage.”

You know, during this teachable moment in our relationship, I did not quite know what to say to this interesting question. Perhaps, because I myself did not grow up pressing a lot of buttons. Thus, without a reservoir of experience learned via trial and error of button pressing, I could not ad lib an explanation. A telephone keypad, a doorbell, the tiny pinhead calculator stopwatch reset button, and an automagic garage door opener are all the buttons I had growing up. At worst, I pressed the doorbell of a neighbor’s home, ran, hid and was later seen by the neighbor as he peered from his front porch into nearby bushes.

And so, I answered, “First, kids need to learn why we press the buttons. Then, kids will know which buttons need to be pressed. And at which time, too, by the way.”

By the way, at midnight one evening a week before, I awoke to the sound of an alarm screeching throughout the house. First, I stood up, frightened and ran down the dark hallway toward a blinking iPhone. Then, I swiped my finger across the screen to shut it off, located the alarm system via touchscreen menu and switched it off with my fingertip forever. Two hours later, Amelia woke us up screaming, and then again two hours after that. Groggy for the rest of the day, I probably haphazardly pressed a few buttons that should not have been pressed.

Buttons, like them or not, dominate my existence, as they operate the numerous tools, accessories, appliances, toys and other recreational systems that orbit our family. Seb is learning to press them and thereby disrupt my sanity, yet, I admit, maybe I do want him to press the buttons, turn things on and off, and explore the machinery of modern life as we know it. Of course, without calling my boss on his cell phone at 9:17 P.M. on Sunday, exploding the microwave, or backing the car into the garage door.